LETTER FROM TBILISI RAINY DAYS IN GEORGIA Ed u a r d Shevard n a dze is a Wes t ern hero. Wha t ’s gone wrong in his own country? BY MICHAEL SPECTER ate on the afte rn o o n of August 29, muc h of what Shev a rd n a d z e promi s e d L19 9 5 ,E d u a r d A.Shev a rd n a d z e,th e has come to pass.Ter ro r ism is no long e r Georgian head of st a t e , walked out of a daily threa t . Par liament is run not by the Par liament Building, in the cap i t a l thugs but by a thirty - s eve n - ye a r - o l d ci t y of Tb i l i s i , and climbed into the back de m o c r at named Zur ab Zhvania, wh o seat of his car for a long-awaited rid e . made his mark as an envi r onmental ac- He was about to sign a document that ti v i s t . Wha t ’s more, Shev a rd n a d z e has he had thought he might never see: a fa s h i o ned a lucrat i v e deal with the Wes t de m o c r atic cons t i t u t i o n for his country. to send oil from the Caspian Sea acros s Georgia had become an independent Georgian territ o r y, tu r ning the country na t i o n just four years earli e r , with the into a station along a new Silk Road. To co l lapse of the Soviet Union; since then, a ch i eve this success, Sh ev a rdn a d ze it had endured a civil war (over the dr ew on the full and often cont ra d i c t o r y se p a r atist reg i o n of Abkhazia) and two arsenal of his political talents: he was other serious upri s i n g s . The nation’s p ragmatic enough to negotiate with ec on o my had virtu a l ly colla p s e d , vi o - ki l lers and ruthless enough to side with lence was widesprea d , and rel a t i o ns with the most successful among them. Russia were poisono u s . Georgia today is a more tra n q u i l Yet by that summer Georgians had place than it was on that summer day begun to hope for better times. T h e when the bomb went off—in no small st r eet fighting had ebbed, fa r mers were pa r t because the country is, in a sense, a wo r king again, and Russia seemed to hi g h l y dependent duchy of the United be leaving its neighbor alone . Most of Sta t e s . Ame ri c an leaders, for both prac - that prog r ess was due to Shev a rd n a d z e, t i cal and sentimental re a s on s , reve re who by force of wi ll , coupled with an Sh ev a rd n a d ze . Last ye a r, the United un ca n n y ability to find consensus even States provided nearly a hundred and am o ng people who seemed to detest fifty mill i on dollars in aid, almost a one another, gove rned Georgia then t h i rd of the Georgian budget. Over as he gover ns it today: de c i s i ve l y and the past decad e , onl y Israel has reg u - a l on e . la r ly rec e i v ed significan t l y more mone y The con s t i t u t i on cere m ony was per person from Was h i n g t on . De s p i t e s cheduled to begin at 7 P.M. But as Ge o r g i a ’s efforts to establish a democ- Shev a rd n a d z e’s car made its way from rac y, in other respects its prog r ess has the Par liament Building,a man perche d been slight: tax revenues are anemic; in a nearby apartment block detonated and last year Tra n s p a re n cy Intern a- a rem o t e - c on t r ol bomb that set the ve- t i on a l , an independent monitor of hi c le on fire, sending shards of gl a s s i n t e rn a t i onal ethics, placed Georgia th r ough the air.Shev a rd n a d z e stumbled e i g h ty - fifth out of a hundred on its into the stree t , stunned and bleeding. list of the world ’s most corrupt coun- That night,Georgians watched on tele- tri e s . Nea r ly ever ything that should be vi s i o n as he spoke from the hospital.Hi s ea r ned in a free society through merit face cover ed with cuts, Shev a rd n a d z e is blatantly for sale, fr om college diplo- st a r ed vacan t l y at the cam e r a and told mas and drive r s ’ licenses to the right the nation, “Th e y want the Mafia to to vote. run this country. Th e y will not succeed. Not long ago, I asked former Sec r e- This is the last act of te r ro r ism in Geor- ta r y of State James A. Baker III why gi a . The whole nation will rise and raz e Ge o r g i a , with five milli o n people, was them to the grou n d . ” so vital to Ame ri c an intere s t s .A rm e n i a It was a rem a r kable perfo rm a n c e , an d has a far larger and more influ e n t i a l 5 4 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 18, 2000 Ame ri c an diaspora, and Azer baijan has a ll our live s . And when we thought up in the rur al Georgian village of Ma - one of the world ’s great res e r ves of oi l . about that part of the world we never mati in the thirt i e s ,d u ring the worst of Baker told me that by 1991 it had be- fo r g ot it. The man’s a hero.” the purge yea r s . Yet his allegiance to co me clear to the Bush Adm i n i s t ra t i o n Stalin never wavere d , and by the time he that new institutions were about to form he world first became aware of She v- was twe n t y, in 1948, he had joined the out of the wrec kage of the Commu - Tard n a d z e in 1985, when Mikhail Par ty. Shev a rd n a d z e, the youngest of nist world , and that Ame ri c a had been Go rb a ch e v,the new leader of th e Sovi e t five chi l d re n , was a talented student and handed a rar e opportu n i t y to influe n c e Un i on , asked his old friend to rep l a c e his parents urged him to become a doc- th e m . “If th e r e was one special place in For eign Minister And r ei Gromy k o ,one to r . In s t e a d , he chose politics. He ad- that reg i on , one country above all that of the last of the hard-line Sov i e t s .O n e vanced rap i d ly—by 1972, he had be- we knew we needed to help, it was evening the previous winter,at Pit s u n d a , co me the Georgian Par ty leader—not Ge o r g i a , ” Baker told me. “Getting the a res o r t on the Black Sea coast favored just because he shut down oppone n t s oil out matters, and so does Georgia’s by the Soviet bosses, the two had spoke n but also because he ran a harsh public phys i cal and cultural position in the at length; and Gorba ch e v had said,“We campaign against corrup t i on . wo rl d . But obvi o u s l y you cannot think cannot go on living like this”—in Sovi e t Georgians pros p e r ed during Sovi e t about that country without thinking so c i e t y.“Eve r ything is rot t e n . ” Shev a r d- ti m e s , but they did so by playing an- about Eduard Shev a rd n a d ze . I am not na d z e rep l i e d , “It has to be cha n g e d .